Why Did Amazon Pick Up Ring, A Shark Tank Reject, For $1 Billion?

Back in 2013, a company called DoorBot went onShark Tank and didn’t do very well. Oh, it got some investment, but it didn’t win the brass ring. It wasn’t a massive hit. So, needless to say, that same panel of investors is in for a little teasing now that Amazon has picked the former DoorBot, now Ring, for a cool $1 billion.

Amazon’s interest in Ring mostly has to do with getting into your house. Ring, if you’re unfamiliar, makes “smart” home security devices, like a camera with floodlights attached, a “video doorbell” that shows you who’s knocking on your door, and a full do-it-yourself security system with alarm keypads and the like. Amazon wants to be able to put a package in your house instead of on your doorstep, a goal of its Amazon Key program, and being able to offer its customers a security cam to ensure that the delivery guy isn’t helping himself to a beer before he leaves would go a long way towards making that happen.

I have owned one since Christmas 2016 and it’s a solid product. Couldn’t wire it in to power so I have to charge it overnight once every 5 or 6 months. But the company has provided solid incremental updates and new useful features. I find it rather useful as a means of documenting who visits my front door. The only downside is attempting to answer my door while I’m at work. The lag between a person speaking and me hearing them and vice versa makes that feature effectively unusable.

Agreed, comrade. We’re completely bought in to the Ring ecosystem (which made me initially worried when I heard about this buy out), and our biggest qualm with the service is the connection delay (or sometimes no connection at all). However, I’m no tech expert, so I don’t know if it’s a fault of the device itself or one’s WiFi/internet connection…or both. Shrug.